


The Long Stride: Book II

by cyclopsBlinder (tereziswife2942)



Series: The Long Stride [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Illustrated Fic, Trojan War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-05 08:40:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tereziswife2942/pseuds/cyclopsBlinder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dave Strider is sucked into an interplanetary war by his own devices.</p><p>(Reading the first installment is not necessary to understand what's going on.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 2.1

The following are excerpts from the journal of Feferi Peixes, gathered from her quarters at Ilium. Most of the writing is not in her native language; only a few scattered words have been italicized. The entries are in order of events described, but not of the time they were written.

-

…the first time I saw him I thought he was a piss poor prince fleshy weak _human_ and so full of himself but then I talked to him behind the pillars and he called me the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and I saw that he meant it and that he wanted me. just me and not because I am some strange new pretty toy to call divine and marry and hide away in the womens quarters. they worship the gods of the void but they do not worship me in the same way and I think but for that he is a foreign heathen who prays to a god made in his own image he worships me in that way. so I took him that night and in the morning he begged me to come back with him. I said no and he said they will not treat you like you are nothing there they will love you and I will love you and you can have freedom. I said they will pretend that I have freedom just like here and he said no you will have the run of my quarters for now and someday I will have all of it for myself and you will stand by my side and no one will say a word about it or I will kill them all. he was so vain and prideful and overconfident and I loved him at that moment I think…

…he snuck me onto the ship with all his easy confidence not a note of nerves about him this is how a prince should be I thought not dull-eyed and afraid of what all the other princes think of him like equius is. when one of the shipmen saw the cloth slip from my head and uncover my horns he raised a shout but eridan was having none of it. he said I was an ilian woman now and they were to take the ship straight home with no stops and if anyone alerted the alternians their head was his. I knew it was not to be this easy of course. there was the oath and what if makara used this as an excuse to start something and equius could snap eridan like a twig but that is if he gets near him so I would not let that happen. I am not so simpering as any of them think even he underestimates me I can tell but that is because I let him. equius never wanted me as anything but the perfect lady eridan likes it when I am clever and conniving and worth something more than a trophy. I doubt he would like it if I am too clever though they never do even if they say they do…

…he asked me how do I spell my name in alternian and I showed him and then he wanted to see other words because he said they looked so pretty and exotic but I told him I did not know many other words and he looked so confused and disheartened at that moment so I kissed him instead of explaining. later I told him that women did not need to know letters even if they were supposed to be emissaries of the void. he said it was downright unconchsionable [sp] and promised to teach me his letters right away…

…I am lerning [sp] human letters now. eridan says I do well the punctatuon [sp] is strange thogh [sp] in _alternian_ we do not have that so much or at lest [sp] I think. my name does not look half so...i do not know the word,  ~~~~ _beautiful_ in this tongue so I think I still write it this way. _feferi peixes_. eridan is looking over my ~~cho~~ shoulder he says it is “beautiful” and I am that too. I will write more later when I know more letters I think…

…we are not even to ilium yet it is so far away I am like to die of boredom I think. I barely even need help with my writing anymore which he is amazed at although I do have trouble with speaking the language it is just so round and there are no tones or vibrations in it at all it is strange. I think about what is going to happen with _zahhak_ and the other alternian nobles a lot and the more I think it is like the less I am sure but the most likely thing is still war probably. he tells me that ilium will never fall it has never fallen before and it is built for defense the enemy could throw themselves up against the walls and theyd last for years on years and I believe him I do but I think about the oath. I wish to gods he had not done that for _gods' sake_  why didnt he see he what could happen. or maybe he just thought no one could go against equius. he was right in that no alternian could but he did not think of humans did he that smart little bastard…

…I wonder how they will receive me in ilium. will they think I am a terrifying barbarian creature or will they think me lovely like eridan does or will they welcome me only because he claims me as his. he tells me about the city and it sounds so foreign I cannot imagine a place that towers near to the sky with walls of steel. this ship is strange enough there are no grubscreens just flat cool surfaces that they program the coordinates into and there is no sopor which I hate but I can live with it even if I accidentally hit eridan with my horns sometimes at night he says it is all right. ilium sounds so beautiful and refined I hated where equius lived it was so ugly and all everyone there thinks of is killing and glory through death and I like the idea of conquering but they spend so much time on it that there is not much else. the ilians fight with money. they trade and buy and sell and they tie themselves into to the economy of every planet they come in touch with and that too is conquering I think and they are not weak either from what eridan tells me and shows me he has this gun and I have never seen anything of its like. it could fell a full grown purpleblood even probably and I tell him that if equius comes for me he should kill him with it and he says of fuckin course I will…


	2. 2.2

The Daily Moon bears a headline that punches Dave straight in the gut. HUMAN EMBASSY RETURNS HOME – AND TAKES LADY ZAHHAK ALONG! The attempt at snark fails in the enormity of the situation. This is bad.

“What’s bad? And take your feet off the table, please, we’ve discussed this before,” Jade says from behind him. Dave complies immediately – he knows his place, after all, and it’s not on the table. Usually. Haha, just kidding, Jade never does anything risqué now that they’ve had Dirk, which is a major bummer but understandable. Kid never stops fucking crying, got a pair of lungs on him like a foghorn on an imperial ship. “I asked, what’s bad? You’re lost in your head again. What’s so devastating about your email?” Dave looks down to see he’s gripping the sides of the grubtop.

“Got something from the Prince of Angtok-Ba’har, he’s been exiled from his homeland and promises to pay us three million caegars if we can just send him a little cash to get back home. Three million caegars, can you believe that,” he replies, turning around in the chair to face her. She’s got her arms on her hips and her hair is in further disarray than usual, indicating she’d gotten up to quiet their son down in the early hours of the night.

“You’re all riled up over a spam mail?” Jade asks, quirking a brow at him.

“How dare you impugn the name of good, dear, respectable Prince Maligha? He’s not like the other fake princes. What if he’s stuck in the backwoods of Betelgeuse for years because no one stopped to consider his plight, tossing him in the junk file like so much chattel? How could I do that in good conscience?” He grins at her, but his body movements betray him – his claws go tip-tap on the polished wooden surface of the table, and his right leg jitters up and down.

“Dave, just tell me what’s wrong.” Jade sighs the entire sentence out and moves to sit in the empty chair next to him. He stops all his nervous tics consciously and makes an effort to look her in the eye.

“Political intrigue. Yeah, yeah, I see you rolling your eyes, and I would too, but this time it’s relevant. You know the embassy from Ilium that Zahhak so graciously volunteered to host? No, of course you don’t, anyways – Peixes went back with them. Willingly, maybe, who knows honestly. But it doesn’t matter. Makara will be coming for me soon.”

“What! Why can’t they just – go and get her? Humans have always stayed out of our business, I doubt they want to get involved…Makara will probably use this as an excuse to start something though; I’ve heard Ilium has been a sore spot for him and his line. Ugh.” Jade furrows her brow, considering the full implications of what Dave’s said. For all she protests disinterest, her mind lends itself easily to considering the precise layout of political clusterfucks.

“Yeah, exactly. He’ll make an effort to get her out of there, but I have a gut feeling shit is going to go down either way, and I’ll be dancing to his tune the whole time.” He sighs a bit and shifts in the chair. It’s kinda digging into his back, or maybe that’s just the nagging feeling of impending civic duty.

Jade sighs as well and leans forward to brush his hair where it clings to the bridge of his nose. “Can you avoid it somehow? Maybe just – hide? Go a couple planets over for the next couple of years. Maybe more than a couple planets over.”

“Nah,” is his reply. “Makara will find me. I have no allies that aren’t also his, and no corner of this end of the galaxy is untouched by his influence.” Just then, his email notification goes off again. “Oh, fuck, already?” It’s from one of Makara’s confidential addresses. There’s nothing in the subject bar. He can tell that it’s written personally by the wobbly lower-upper-case fluctuation, and it informs him in a genial, meandering sort of way that Gamzee will be visiting him in less than twenty-four hours.

“Well, shit,” Jade remarks, peering at the screen and attempting to fully decipher the purple text. “Whoa – twenty-four hours? Gods, Dave, what are we going to do?”

“Gimme a sec, I’m – I’m thinking. Yep. Okay, maybe, like, I’ve been injured? No, he’ll ask where, when, to see the injury, maybe I’m deathly ill! Naw, he’ll just take me with him and call up the best doctors he can on the way there. Insane? Yeah, insanity, how the fuck do you even act insane. Should I go outside and start planting seeds on the beach? Dance on the rooftop?”

“No, wait! That’s not actually a bad idea if we could pull it off? After all, you can’t physically _prove_ someone’s insane, just show it. You’re not that good an actor in that respect, though,” Jade says.  He makes a shocked noise at her audacity to insult his finely honed acting skills. She just snorts and elbows him under the armpit. He stands up and moves towards the bathroom, and she follows. Soon they’re both rifling through the medicine cabinets and looking underneath the sink for something, anything. Some medicines pique their interest for promised side effects, but he’d have to take too much to get enough of a response within the next night. They move on to the bedroom, which does not offer much in the way of possibilities, but Dave takes the chance to butterfly kiss Dirk on his adorable little grub face, at which he sort of chirp-laugh-gurgles. Fucking precious. As he goes to move his face out of the mini-‘cuper, he registers the thin layer of sopor clinging to Strigrub’s orange body, giving it a sickly sheen. The depth is one point nine inches because anything more and a grub can somehow manage to drown itself. Grubs are cute but man are they stupid. He was never that dumb, he’s pretty sure he came out of the mothergrub clutching a poor-quality katana. Jade, standing next to him, makes a clicky noise, which reminds him of her eureka-I-found-it chirps when she used to work late in the basement fooling around with reverse-engineering tech he’d gotten from Makara and a few things he’d picked up in remote corners of the system.

“Of course! Sopor!” she exclaims and drags a claw through the pool of it on the bottom of the mini-‘cuper. She turns to Dave and asks, “Have you ever heard about the supposed side effects of directly ingesting sopor? It’s not toxic, but they say its effect is close to that of a drug like, say, angel dust. There’s reduced strength, poor motor skill, the works. And best of all, sopor doesn’t register in your system because it’s already broken down in your skin during the day!” Jade slicks the sopor across his cheek and grins triumphantly. He swallows a little because that’s kinda hot, wow, maybe he should have spent more time in the basement when she was on her science-capades. “It’s _perfect._ ”

 

\---

 

Makara comes exactly twenty four hours and three seconds later. Jade composes herself as much as she can in the face of the current situation and cracks open the door. It’s time to bust out her yet-untested acting chops.

“Oh, my lord,” she breathes out, friendly but with a note of apprehension lurking in her voice. “Welcome to our home – please, come in –”

“Jade!” Gamzee exclaims and yet still manages to keep a casual drawl in his speech. “Feels like it’s been forever since I’ve seen you, sister. Not since the wedding, right?”

“That’s right, sir,” she answers. Remember to keep eyes cast downward and fingers clenched at sides. By the time this is over she should be nominated for a troll Oscar.

“Well, Jade girl, I’m sorry to up and meet you again in these less than ideal circumstances. I feel all kinds of awful taking your husband away from you.” Gamzee frowns, but it’s perfunctory. There’s no real remorse in his eyes. He’s taken thousands of men away from their wives already. Jade expertly quashes the upwelling of anger in her gut and merely sighs.

“Actually, lord Makara, I – I have to tell you something, before you find out for yourself by talking to Dave.” She pauses for dramatic effect and his gaze stops traveling around the (admittedly humble, but neither of them are the type for extravagance) room and focuses on her. “A few months after we were married, he started acting strangely – he’d always been a bit jittery and easily distracted, but I put it up to his military experiences affecting his behavior. But he started making less and less sense as time went on, and doing the most nonsensical things! We called in some medicullers but they had nothing to say on the matter; therapunishers told us he was experiencing severe stress from his past in the corps, but they couldn’t _fix_ him.” She stops to take a shaking breath and meet Makara’s now somewhat perplexed gaze. “When he got your message yesterday, he was so excited – kept rambling about how he’d finally get back to seeing some action and all that. But I’m worried. How could Dave be of any use to you in the state he’s in?”

“I’m not sure I’m all understanding the nature of the situation, Jadesis,” he says slowly. “What state is Strider being in that he can’t be of any motherfucking use to us?”

She wrings her hands and says “Look, why don’t I just show him to you? This way, please.” Jade whirls around and heads for the bedroom. Gods she hoped that was convincing. Was it too dramatic? Too simpering? Better not to think about it and just keep going. Makara lopes into the room after her and they both stop in front of the big cushy chair next to their recuperacoon, where Dave is sprawled with limbs laid haphazardly. A wide smile crawls its way across his face and Jade has to resist the urge to smile back – despite the seriousness of the situation, it’s pretty hilarious to see his reaction to sopor. She gave him just a dab, since lowbloods are generally more susceptible to the effects and she didn’t know what his mutant blood meant in this situation.

“Jaaaaaade. Jade. You’re back! You were gone _forever._ ” Dave’s eyes are wide and convey his sincerity. Sopor is said to change one’s perception of time, so it could have felt like an eternity to him. He then seems to notice Gamzee and his eyes grow wider still. He slurs “Gamzee! Gamzee Makara. Looong time no see. I am so pumped for this Ilium shit, you don’t even know, like – I’m a fucking industrial grade tire and the air is my level of excitement. I am in serious danger of losing my shit all over the fucking highway.”

Gamzee grins at him. “That’s good to hear my brother.”

“Yeah, fuck, I’m so – where’s Dirk? I wanna. See him, shit, it’s been too long. How old is he now, two sweeps probably?” At this he collapses into hysterical giggles.

“He’s only a perigee old, just like he was five minutes ago when you saw him,” Jade snaps, and the frustration in her voice is partly real. Dave already thinks he’s hilarious when he’s sober, but now he makes worse jokes _and_ he’s even more assured of his comedic genius.

“Oh? Okay, shit, I. Fuck, I feel like I’ve been sitting here for a whole sweep at least.” His smile falls. “Jade, I don’t like this, make it stop.”

“I can’t, I’m sorry, sweetheart –”

“I’m so fucking hungry,” he interrupts her. “Shit, gotta get up first. Okay, here we go. Upsie daisy.” Dave struggles to lift himself from the chair, grabbing the sides with slightly shaking hands. Jade attempts to help but is waved off. Eventually he makes it to a standing position and wobbles slightly on his feet. As he tries to take his first step towards the door, Gamzee stops him with a palm flat to his chest.

“I think I have motherfucking seen enough,” he rumbles. Jade holds her breath. It worked, then? “Sit back down, my cherry red brother.” Dave plops back into the chair without protest. When Gamzee gets his serious on it’s impossible not to pay him mind, no matter how fucking high you are.

“Normally I’d say that Strider ain’t motherfucking fit to serve in so much as the position of janiterrorist on my fleet. But –” Gamzee tilts Dave’s head back with one hand and pries one of his eyes wide with two fingers of the other – “unfortunately for you folks I am unusually _well-motherfucking-acquainted_ with the effects of sopor.”

Jade’s heart drops into her stomach. She didn’t even think about Makara being familiar with sopor – she’d assumed his noble upbringing kept him well away from such influences – she’d heard rumors of him having run wild in his youth but – fucking hell, they were screwed now. She decides to do the only thing she can now, which is bluff. There’s a gun underneath the bed and she makes it appear in her hand. It’s her broodfather’s, actually. Though it looks clunky and out-of-date, she swears by it. It could blow Makara’s head clean off, probably. Right now she’d really like to see that happen.

She levels it at his head and snarls, “I’m not going to let you take him. We can be gone before you blink.” Gamzee just blinks at her slowly and grins. He is apparently not at all intimidated by the rifle or the way she procured it.

“Now sister, where do you think you can up and go whereat I can’t find you? No matter what corner of the galaxy you tuck yourself into, you ain’t gonna be safe from me. Wouldn’t you rather I take your husband and return him after a short bit so’s you can raise your little grub together in peace and quiet and motherfucking security? It ain’t much to ask, sister, not after all I’ve done for him.”

She snaps, “What, give him what amounts to table scraps? That’s less than he deserves, and you don’t get to act all benevolent just because you treat him like a charity case rather than scum like you’re expected to!!” Makara’s jaw twitches.

“You got a lot a fire in you, Jadesis. I admire that.” His eyes narrow and his voice drops a full octave as he continues – it sounds like gravel rattling around in a shoebox. “Better be careful it don’t burn you up along with it one day. You don’t got your understanding on as how the motherfucking world works and while I find your naiveté charming I am not in the motherfucking mood to entertain it.”

“Fine. Have your way. Now please get out of the room, I need to make Dave presentable.” She pauses, waiting for him to show assent and begin to lope away before finally lowering the rifle. As soon as Makara disappears from the entryway, Dave looks at her gravely.

“Would you be really mad if I said I had a boner right now?” he asks.

“Get in the bathroom right now and get that crap out of your system!” she whisper-screams. “Ugh, never mind, stop trying to stand up. I’ll just move us there.” Once inside, Dave collapses to the ground bonelessly. He looks bereft at the realization that his chair is gone. Jade flips the toilet seat up. “Well?”

“Uhhhhh,” he slurs. “Man, I don’t even know how to do this. Surprisingly enough, I have never had to puke up anything. My past is not the wild blur of hookers and blow that you may have thought it w – ow, fuck! That hurts!” he protests as she grips his hair and steers his head towards the toilet seat. “So I just – cram fingers down my throat, I guess? All right, here I go. I am going. Yeah. Definitely gonna do this.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, am I going to have to stick my own damn fingers down your throat?!” Jade wails. She’d tear out her hair but both hands are busy dealing with Dave’s monumental stupidity.

“If I say yes will you be mad?” he says into the toilet bowl.

“Ugh, just – move over a little bit,” she grumbles and kneels next to her husband on the cold tile. “I’m going to miss you so much. If you die I’m gonna kill you!!”

“That doesn’t make sense. What am I gonna like, double die? That ain’t even possible. Although knowing you, you’d manage it somehow in the burning intensity of your rage at my audacity to pass from this mortal plane.”

“Shut up and let me make you ralph, buttlord,” she says fondly.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't do drugs kids

**Author's Note:**

> artwork by me, and referenced from Frederic Leighton's painting Helen on the Walls of Troy.


End file.
